Every Drop for Sale
Our Desperate Battle Over Water in a World About to Run Out
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- 299,00 Kč
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- 299,00 Kč
Publisher Description
An investigative journalist explores our world on the brink of running out of usable water.
Less than .0008 percent of the total water on Earth is fit for human consumption, but global consumption of fresh water is doubling every twenty years. Water has become perhaps our most precious commodity-a life-sustaining but increasingly rare and privatized resource. A dramatic gap exists between those who have adequate water for survival and those who don't, and tensions over water in some areas of the world hover just below open war.
From Europe to Asia to Africa to America, Jeffrey Rothfeder has visited the world's hot spots, those with the least amount of water, as well as places where there is so much of it that plans are in the works to sell the excess to the highest bidder. In this compelling narrative account of our world in turmoil over water, Rothfeder describes the issues and struggles of the people on all sides of the water crisis: from the scarred survivors of bizarre water-management practices, to those who are willing to die for water to sustain their families and crops, to the scientists and leaders who are trying to set things straight.
Important, provocative, and immensely readable, Every Drop for Sale explores a fascinating critical dilemma: As we run out of it, is water a fundamental right of everybody on Earth or just a product humans need that can be bought and sold like any other commodity?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Turning on the kitchen faucet for a glass of clear, cool water, a privilege for astonishingly few people in the world, is soon to vanish for all but the very wealthy or the quite privileged: that's the core message of investigative journalist Rothfeder's sobering report on the future of a substance essential to life. In his thorough overview of the future of freshwater resources, Rothfeder (The People vs. Big Tobacco) opines that water is fated to become a commodity, bought up by multinationals and sold to those who can afford it. The case he makes is relentless, from damning dams in Egypt, China and the U.S., to the dry prospects for Atlanta and Los Angeles, where inexorable population growth has far outpaced water supplies; from the likelihood of Middle East water wars to a desperate scramble to perfect desalinization technology. Like the drip of water on stone, Rothfeder's steady exposition of horrors will wear down any reader's doubts that water is the next flashpoint of global politics, human rights and health issues. Unfortunately, his eye-opening accumulation of facts is undercut by his dry style. This book lacks the graceful prose of Canadian journalist Marq de Villiers earlier book on the same topic (Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, 2000), but makes up for that with its solid, scary reporting.
